UMNO/BN’s 13GE “War Room” had failed in one of its major and very sinister objective – to racialise the Gelang Patah contest and in the process the 13th general elections

There is now a lot of recriminations about the failures of the UMNO/Barisan Nasional 13th General Election “War Room” strategists and propagandists, with former UMNO Ministers like the former Finance Minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin and the former Information Minister and former Utusan Malaysia editor-in-chief, Zainuddin Maidin openly making very disparaging and derogatory criticisms about the Umno/BN “War Room”.

Both Daim and Zainuddin have called for the sacking of Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s advisers – Daim criticising the wrong approach and strategy in the 13GE in banking on Najib’s personal popularity in the bid to help BN regain its two-thirds parliamentary majority while Zainuddin blogging about his disgust and contempt for the “I Love PM” campaign.

The critics have even flayed Najib’s “War Room” strategists as having done worse than former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah’s “Fourth Floor Boys”.

But what is most welcome is the failure of the UMNO/BN’s 13GE “War Room” in one of its major and very sinister objective – to racialise the Gelang Patah contest and in the process the 13th general elections.

Even the utterly irresponsible and reckless attempt by former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir, to racialise the Gelang Patah contest between former Mentri Besar Datuk Ghani Othman and myself by alleging that I wanted to create a “racial confrontation” and that I was seeking to incite the Chinese to hate the Malays, failed.

It proved two things: firstly, that more and more Malays support the call for an end of the politics of race, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power; and secondly, the Malays are not so easily deceived by Mahathir and the UMNO/BN propagandists, as they can see that I had not contested in Gelang Patah to knock out Ghani, but it was Ghani who came to contest against me in what was a traditional MCA parliamentary seat.

But what is deplorable is the MCA role, both during and after the 13GE, to help UMNO to racialise the general elections, whether in Gelang Patah or country-wide before or after the May 5 general elections results.

The growing chorus of criticisms of Najib’s “War Room” strategists and propagandists point to an escalation of the power struggle in UMNO in the run-up to the UMNO party elections at the end of the year.

UMNO leaders will compete for the UMNO popularity stakes, even abusing their Ministerial and government positions and heedless of the harm and damage their utterances and actions could do to Malaysia’s plural society.

One such UMNO leader is the new Home Minister, Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi, who is clearly prepared to use his own Ministerial position to advance his own personal political agenda in UMNO.

He would want to make himself a hero in UMNO if he could take action against the DAP, including declaring DAP as illegal and unlawful, even on the most flimsiest, ridiculous and outrageous of grounds.

This is the only reason for the sudden and shocking statement by the Registrar of Societies, Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman yesterday questioning the legality of the DAP National Congress last December by making the baseless allegation that
many DAP members who were eligible to attend its national congress on December 15 last year did not receive notice to do so.

This is a “political twist” to the RoS investigations into the DAP and I see a political “black hand” behind it – all the way to Zahid Hamidi.

My judgment of Zahid as the most “political” Home Minister in the nation’s history is being vindicated with the passage of time, as Zahid is not only “politicising” the police, he is “politicising” other departments in the Home Ministry as well – whether Immigration or the Registry of Societies.

[Speech at the DAP Kluang (Parliamentary) and Mengkibol (State Assembly) “Thank-You Voters” ceramah in Kluang on Friday, 31st May 2013 at 9.30 pm]